Friday, December 30, 2016

The RPG Character Library: Dungeon ADVENTURE!

My friend Joe is also doing this here character library thing. For his first entry, he decided to make a character across multiple versions of the same system or franchise. For those of you who didn't click the hypertext, Joe picked Star Wars.

I'm stealing Joe's idea, partly because I think it will save a whole lot of time (who has just about every edition of D&D ever? This guy!), but also because it's interesting to see how and why changes occur from system to system or from edition to edition. And also, since it's been a whole ten minutes before I flogged the, "Geoff Makes Games!" horse, I I decided to steal Joe's idea and apply it to one of my own game systems. So without further ado:

Dungeon ADVENTURE! (and yes, I'm going to keep capitalizing it, because I've done so for literally years and I can't seem to stop) was a rules-light fantasy system that I started cobbling together around about the year 2000. At the time, I thought it was a great, new innovation in gaming. A coup d'etat, to coin a Norman phrase. Hindsight and a mild increase in maturity has proved me wrong--there wasn't anything innovative about it--it was a D&D clone and that's pretty much it.

But it was myD&D clone, goddamn it.

It might not have been a good game, but it was a game I spent a lot of time on. Of all the RPGs I've made, it was definitely the one I've played the most. Sadly, I don't have the original-original version of the rules, but I do have the final version of the original version of the rules (if that makes sense), a game that was very briefly published under the Game Hermits imprint.

For those who are interested, the game goes a little something like this: You roll 3d6 for your stats and place them wherever. You get stat bonuses from your race and your class. Your race and class also provide you with bonuses to certain skills. Then you get five skill points to buy whatever skills you want. You would also get a class bonus at fifth level and every five levels thereafter, which would slowly but surely turn you into the ultimate badass.

Dungeon ADVENTURE! was made during the time period where I was heavily influenced by games that were both rules-light and funny, and it shows. Some of the jokes still work sort of okay, but the rest, like most humor, was appropriate to the time in which it was written and has not aged well. It also relied very heavily on what I like to call Hackmaster humor (and not just because I was reading Hackmaster at the time). The GM is a jerk. The players are jerks. They fight all the time in the example text. Ha ha! Isn't this hilarious? Don't you want to play this game with your argumentative friends? No?

The layout of the first edition rules are super-wonky and kind of hard to follow, even for me, the guy who made the game. I was able to make a character in about fifteen minutes, though, which isn't too bad. Here he is!

From here, we enter a twelve-year phase of endless revisions. You see, I brought Dungeon ADVENTURE! with me when I left Game Hermits for SlugFest Games, thinking that the simple, straightforward design and goofy humor would be a good fit for our company products. Unfortunately, the powers that be passed on every version of the game I made (and there were a lot of them), worried that they were either too complex, not complex enough, too goofy, too not goofy, didn't model reality well enough, were too abstract, and so on.

This culminated in the very last version of the game that I wrote in 2012. I wrote this game for me and no one else. It is written in a much more serious and straightforward style and, though a lot of the rules have changed, the character is still recognizable as a Dungeon ADVENTURE! character if you squint.

My biggest problem with making this version of the character was that it took so damn long. On the one hand, the character is more fleshed out with skills and equipment due to the much more comprehensive rules. On the other hand, it had lost the fun and free-wheeling feel of the earlier edition. It almost felt like I took Tunnels & Trolls and turned it into Chivalry & Sorcery (much love in advance to the handful of people who understood that reference).

Navino
the Blue, Human Sorcerer

Human: +1 to any Stat (Will). Knack (Explorer): +2 Survival.

Sorcerer: Important stat: Will. +1 Rank to 2 Domains,
+1 Rank to 2 Powers, The Sight, +2 bonus to Power and Domain skills, Have 2
Active Spells at once.

Race

Human

Class

Sorcerer

Body

2

Speed

3/30’

Fighting

2

Status

7 (Landowner)

Intellect

4

Wealth

0

Will

6

Life

7

Luck

2

Fate

2

Skills

Awareness: 1

Defense: 1

Diplomacy: 1

Domain <Animal>: 2

Domain <Body>: 2

Domain <Water>: 2

Job <Land Manager>: 2

Power <Control:> 2

Power <Strengthen>: 2

Power <Weaken>: 2

Ride <Mule>: 1

Spellcraft: 3

Survival <Wilderness>: 3

Weapon <Daggers>: 1

Willpower: 1

Sorcerous Power

Active Spells: 2

Range: 60’

Damage: 1d6+2

Healing: +2

Stat/Skill Change: +/-2

Volume: 4’ diameter sphere

Equipment

Fine Clothing

Dagger

Map of His Domain

Mule (Percy)

Saddlebags

Flint and Tinder

Lantern

Lamp Oil

This is one of the few times where I compared the latest version of something I made to the earliest version of something I've made and realized that I liked the earliest version better. In fact, I was so enamored with the earlier version that I've decided to try and revise it, creating a new iteration of Dungeon ADVENTURE! that uses everything I've learned up until now.

It will probably still be funny (though not as antagonistic) and easy to play (without being too simplistic). It will have structure where it's needed and no structure where it doesn't. It will be fun and flexible and it will come out eventually...